Exposure to dogs beneficial

I love my dogs. My Lab is exuberance personified, but sweet. My pound puppy is a bit on the dim side, but sweet. They love me no matter what, and when I’m sad or stressed, they make me feel better, just like my Irish setter did when I was a kid. She didn’t care if I’d cleaned my room or done my chores.

Dogs make hospitalized patients feel better, too. The nursing literature is full of studies on the benefits of “animal-assisted therapy,” particularly with children suffering from cancer, nursing home patients and patients suffering from psychiatric illness. Not much has shown up in the physician-oriented literature. Until now, that is.

The American Heart Association just finished up its annual scientific session. Included was a report to the assembled doctors about a UCLA study that looked at measurable benefits associated with including dogs into the therapeutic mix for patients suffering from heart failure. The lead author of the study, Kathie Cole, a critical care nurse, admitted that until her study, using dogs to soothe patients’ minds and improve their health was considered a “nicety” without science to back it up.

Cole and her researchers studied 76 patients who were hospitalized for heart failure, a condition in which the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs. These patients were hooked up to a zillion monitors, allowing the researchers to study changes in heart function and stress hormones. They also studied changes in mood.

The patients were sorted into three groups. Group I had a 12-minute interaction with a human volunteer who brought along a dog (the volunteer-dog team). Group II had a 12-minute interaction with a human volunteer alone, and the third group, the “at rest” group, had no interaction with dog or volunteer. The patients were randomly assigned to one of the groups.

The specially trained dogs actually lay on the hospital beds so the patients could touch the dogs. Twelve different breeds were used.

The researchers measured the patients’ “hemodynamics.” These measurements gave them a collective picture of blood volume, heart function and resistance in the blood vessels. They checked the measurements immediately before the volunteers came (or didn’t come for the “at rest” group), eight minutes into the interaction and four minutes after. They also measured epinephrine and norepinephrine (stress hormone) levels at the same times. Finally, they gave anxiety tests to the patients before and after the intervention.

The results were heart-warming for all us dog lovers. Anxiety scores dropped 24 percent for patients who got visits from the volunteer-dog team. Scores for those who were visited by volunteers only dropped 10 percent while scores for the at-rest patients did not change at all.

Epinephrine levels dropped an average of 17 percent in the volunteer-dog team patients, 2 percent in the volunteer-only group and actually rose 7 percent in the at-rest patients. Selected measurements of heart function improved in the volunteer-dog team group of patients, but got worse in the volunteer only and at-rest groups. The volunteer-dog team group showed greater improvement than the volunteer-only group in other selected measures of heart function and in norepinephrine levels.

According to Cole, “This study demonstrates that even a short-term exposure to dogs has beneficial…effects on patients who want it.” Cole added, “[t]his therapy warrants serious consideration as an [addition] to medical therapy in hospitalized heart failure patients. Dogs are a great comfort. They make people happier, calmer and feel more loved. That is huge when you are scared and not feeling well.”

What do you want to bet that Cole is a dog owner, or at least a dog lover? This is a decidedly low-tech intervention in a very high-tech medical environment. No doubt that puppy looked mighty strange on the intensive-care unit bed, but came at no cost to the patient or the patient’s insurance company.

Did I mention I love my dogs?